


look

by rektsaurus



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Random - Freeform, maybe requited
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 15:27:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5168909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rektsaurus/pseuds/rektsaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boy's all he thinks about and the boy doesn't know.</p><p>Maybe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	look

**Author's Note:**

> i just wanted to write about something, maybe the stars or the ocean or my favorite person, and this came out.
> 
> i might include another chapter cause i feel like it's short but don't count on it. have fun!
> 
> fun fact: this is actually quite boring. so don't bother reading. im just posting for the heck of it. don't be surprised at the sheer randomness this story gives off

He learns to just look. Look and look and look.

He never touches the masterpiece he was given. Afraid to mar it with his dirty hands and undeserving thoughts. He just looks, and through looking he learns to appreciate. 

He observes his black hair and his brown eyes and his bronze body with the corded veins wrapped around thick muscles. He sees his arm flex and his body shirtless. He sees his jaw unshaven, stubble decorating his chin while his lips pout into a grin. He sees his tongue bitten between his teeth, the twinkle in his eyes as they squint before he lets out a musical laugh that takes breaths around the room, inhaling them for his own.

He sees the boy for who he is. The insecure, discomforted boy who needs reassurance again and again and again. He gives it, manages to do it with just looking, and he knows the boy’s reassured through the hard stares and the worried glances. He looks for any disturbance in his posture, any crack in the glass, finds nothing and is relieved. The boy mutely thanks him, smiles and proceeds to make him fall in love all over again, but he can only look. Look and look and look.

There’s always a girl involved. So he simply looks. Stares at the tousled hair that used to be a gelled up quiff. Stares at the scruffy beard that used to be shaved and maintained. Stares at the muscled shoulders and broad back that used to be skinny and borderline anorexic. Stares at the fresh skin with expensive perfume mingled with a girl’s scent that used to be scattered with ladders of red imprints. Stares at the smile on his face that used to be a grim line. Stares at his eyes that used to express brokenness that hid itself carefully.

He learns to hide when the boy kisses the girl from the girl band that’s not remotely up at their level. He looks and sets his blue eyes stoic as they walk hand-in-hand, lips wide and curved and open as they proclaim their love for each other. He watches and sees the way the boy is happy because of the girl, and when he sings for her, she loves it and he loves her and there’s nothing else to complicate. He’s in love with a boy who’s in love with a girl who’s also in love with him. He’s used to just looking, never touching, so he watches and watches and watches. Through watching, his heart starts to break, crack by crack.

He learns to resist the giddiness when the boy touches him, his lips centimeters away from his own as he keeps an arm around his shoulder. He learns to just look at the taller boy, who smiles back at him and his stubble makes contact with his forehead and it tickles him, tickles him to the realization that they’re touching and he’s simply not looking anymore. He looks up, gluing his mouth shut as his eyes shine with awe at the present masterpiece he has the chance to observe up close. The boy laughs, says his name over and over, and he can’t stop his ears from perking up at each sound. The boy laughs once more, cuddles him closer to his chin, and he can’t help but fall in love at the anchor steadying him.

The boy leaves eventually. At first he’s not happy, then he learns to look back at the memory of almost kissing the boy of his dreams. He learns to relive. Relive and relive and relive. 

The boy then becomes international news with diamonds and circular metal along with the girl. They respond appropriately at the question asked, and the boy doesn’t hide the happiness in his eyes when the girl affirms everything. That they’re engaged and happy and maybe in a year they’ll be one. He learns to watch the telly with disdain, grasps the remote and switches it off. He learns to shut down. Shut down and shut down and shut down.

Within a year the boy breaks up with the girl. Then he breaks away from the band. The boy needs rest, he learns. The boy has to keep his sanity intact. He learns to save face and pretend he’s fine. Pretend and pretend and pretend.

The following songs are not the same anymore, without the high notes and the backup vocals of a sonorous. There’s a curly, long-haired boy in the band who provides them, but still he finds them different. He sings with a croak, not feeling any of the tracks as his voice might be whole but his identity is not. The songs are rocky and poppy, but his heart remains empty and keeps on finding jazz or rap or indie or anything that reminds him of the boy.

The boy gets into a fight with another member of the band who’s heavily tattooed and has metamorphic hair from brown to red then back to brown, inconsistent yet patterned. On a bird’s site they jab at each other, and when the fans of the band raise their pitchforks at the former, the boy raises his hands in defense. The boy supports himself, and he would have supported him too, but he’s still hurt and his heart’s still in pieces but the boy doesn’t know, doesn’t care and doesn’t go to check on him.

It’s in the middle of the night when the boy comes crashing to his room, scaring the hell out of him with his hair that glints in the moonlight. His hair’s silver, he realizes, and the boy smiles at him and laughs at his bewilderment. The boy sits down on the bed, oblivious to the shaking body underneath the covers as he makes himself at home. But he’s too shocked, too surprised to say anything, and when the surprise falls rage bubbles up from within his core, and he finds himself screaming.

The boy cocks his head at him, confused as he screams and screams and flings himself towards the boy. The boy’s still muscled and warm and comforting, and he cries into his shirt, clutching desperately. The boy sits and lets him cry, snaking his arms around him as he coos the lad’s flattened blonde hair. He continues crying until he falls asleep, and when he wakes up, the boy’s gone.

He learns to wonder about the boy. Wonder and wonder and wonder. He picks up his phone and unlocks it, finds a note about a new number and he sends a message to the number. Not a minute later the phone lights up with a text, and the black font on the gray cloud is the reply.

**follow me**

He wonders again. He remembers the night before, but he regards that as a dream. It can’t be real. The boy of his dreams doesn’t have silver hair. But then the bird site causes his phone to vibrate, repeating the notification sounds so much that he wants to chuck the half-eaten apple branded phone. He swipes down the screen and taps a random notification. It is a picture from a news account, and the picture reveals the newly dyed hair of the boy of his dreams.

His phone vibrates once more, the ringtone for his messages blaring. He swipes down and taps the message.

**niall r u there?**

He looks at the gray cloud, sees the black font swimming in front of his eyes. Then he locks the phone, chucks it at the nightstand and falls back under the covers.

When he wakes up he responds to the text. 

They meet at the park later at night, and the boy sighs in relief at that. The boy’s leaning against the tree with his arms crossed, and when he comes strolling to the park with a hooded sweatshirt and gray sweatpants, the boy walks closer to him with his denim vest outlining his bare arms and the boy catches him in a hug.

The boy is still intoxicating, he notices. His blue eyes widen as his nose gets caught up in the boy’s black undershirt, but he doesn’t care. His arms embrace the boy, arms taught as they hold onto the boy. The boy embraces him back, his chest rumbling as he lets out a laugh. 

He looks up and finds the moon behind the boy shining so bright that he has to squint his eyes. Or maybe it’s the boy’s silver hair and the way it complements the moon that makes him do it. Or maybe it’s just the boy with his brown eyes and shown teeth that makes him fall in love despite the cracks.

He tiptoes, falls in love, and falls into the boy’s lips with his own.

The boy doesn’t push him away.


End file.
